Monday night’s US presidential debate should convince a majority of American voters that Hillary Clinton is their only credible choice for the White House. Yet it may well fail to do so, in the new era of ‘post-truth politics’. The historian Sir Michael Howard suggests that on both sides of the Atlantic, we are witnessing a retreat from reason, an attempt to reverse the onset of the 18th-century Age of the Enlightenment, which banished superstition and religious faith as a basis for reaching conclusions. The progress of Donald Trump supports his thesis. I have just spent a fortnight in southern California, researching a book on the Vietnam war, and saw everywhere manifestations of Trumpery. A big Jeep overtook me on the coastal highway, bearing a window sticker: ‘I AM A STRAIGHT CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVE GUN-OWNER. What more can I say to piss you off?’
Cultured Americans view the Trump candidacy with almost paralysed horror.
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